Aug 1996 - Brian's Corner begins. I needed to access my bookmarks from work and home. The site initially had 4 pages. One of them still exists on today's site, though it has changed a bit over time.
 |
Jun 2000 - After a number of years, the site needed a change. Buttons that responded to the cursor were added. A main page was designed to provide some dynamic content.
 |
Jan 2001 - The site needed more personality. Most of the back-end code stayed the same, the new design required reworking with tables to generate a layout including customized images on the upper-right and lower-left corners. The web links had grown from two pages to three.
 |
May 2001 - I needed to add more categories as the site was about to undergo a transformation on the back-end. These changes required smaller navigation buttons. Behind the scenes the site began to diversify from it's original heritage of HTML and JavaScript. New coding with PHP, MySQL, and CSS was added.
 |
May 2004 - The new coding presented opportunites for growth. The only limit was screen real estate. That called for a new design. This design, inspired by the old, continues to use more coding based on CSS, PHP, and MySQL. These improvements add functionality and simplify updates.
 |
Aug 2004 - Until recently, three of the original pages were still on the site. The content originally on the home page had transformed into the Mac Links page and ultimately the Links index. Far more powerful, it maintains some of the original look and feel. A recent change included a bolder set of navigation buttons and title text.
 |
Nov 2007 - As part of the cleanup and coding changes over the prior two years, the forums and image gallery were rethemed. The new themes tied into each other, and had a better fit with the overall appearance of the site. Part of this include bridging the accounts between the forum and image gallery. The forum membership determines which pictures and galleries are visible.
 |
Dec 2007 - There are many changes that have occured under the hood since 2004. The Frames option is handled by CSS, and a padlock icon replaces the words. Much of the code has moved from tables to CSS. AJAX with Prototype and Scriptaculous have allowed visual effects with the weather system. The news system has been rewritten and is AJAX based. The images are tied to login and "slideshow" while on the page.
 |
Dec 2008 - Continuous Improvements... behind the scenes: more code consolidation and standardization. Up front: a universal login system, universal search, and a new weather system with radar and detailed weather information. The navigation buttons are CSS and HTML (new buttons do not reqiure new images). More dynamic code based on logged in user. The news system fetches articles behind the scenes. Updates are so fast, the option to change when they occur has been removed.
 |
Apr 2010 - Major updates to the Forum and Gallery software inspired a new color palette. The old colors had served the site well for nine plus years. It was time for a change. Additional consolidation of code and simplification were performed on the site. The Weather system has been promoted as a "menu bar" item.
 |
Oct 2013 - Refreshing the Refresh... updated logo, simpler & flatter design, fewer images. The links pages have a tree view that was added some time back, as was the new calendar icon on the upper right. Over the past 3 years, there have been many incremental updates to the site and components.
 |
Feb 2021 - More style, less images... logo cleaned up, images moved into a single file, buttons are full css (background image is gone), mobile friendly, new weather system, and updated styling throughout. Behind the scenes: optimization. New web engine and fewer JavaScript libraries. The site typically loads in less than 0.5 seconds.
 |
Jun 2024 - Backend Optimization... most of the work in the past few years has been to improve performance. Dedicated VPS, Opcache, Redis, Cloudflare, increased local caching, and reduced php processing were part of this work. The design had some updates, the weather system added new features (including it's own page... again).
 |
Sep 2024 - Dark mode support added: uses the browser configuration. Eliminates that "oh, so bright..." experience at night. Other changes include removal of Google Maps API, addition of Air Quality Index to weather, and other consistency and optimization improvements.
 |
